On A Cold Day, Gore Blasts 'Global Warming'

(CNSNews.com) - Former Vice President Al Gore will attack the Bush administration's environmental policy Thursday in a noontime speech sponsored by the anti-Bush group MoveOn.org and another liberal group called Environment2004.

"Mr. Gore will issue an indictment of the Bush administration's inaction on global warming, linking the issue to U.S. national security," announced the sponsors of Gore's speech.

"He will show that global warming is happening right now, and yet the President is choosing to help his coal- and oil-company supporters rather than advance modern technologies that can affordably solve this critical problem.

"The speech will also explore the administration's deliberate attempts to mislead the public as it attacks basic environmental laws and protection," said the sponsors of Gore's speech.

The idea of Gore addressing global warming on a bitterly cold day in New York prompted snickering in some quarters.

As for the substance of Gore's allegations, two skeptical groups said the man has no credibility, giving his previous inaccurate statements on environmental issues.

Al Gore has frequently gotten away with exaggerations, spins, and outright untruths in his past remarks on environmental issues," said the National Center for Public Research Policy.

"The public would be wise to seek independent, authoritative confirmation of any allegations Gore makes about the environment," the group said.

The National Center for Public Research Policy specifically refutes three of Gore's recent claims -- about arsenic, melting glaciers, and the alleged link between forest fires and global warming.

Contrary to what Gore said, President Bush never tried to increase the amount of arsenic in our drinking water, the National Center said.

Moreover, Gore's conclusion that global warming contributed to severe wildfires in Florida in 1998 cannot be borne out scientifically; and the group noted that scientists disagree with Gore's belief that the past behavior of a few glaciers can reliably be used as a predictor of future global temperature.

The National Center for Public Policy Research describes itself as a non-partisan conservative/free market foundation.

Another free-market public policy group said people familiar with Gore's ideas on the environment can expect "the same kind of hysterical predictions of doom and contempt for modern civilization" that he advanced in his 1992 book, Earth in the Balance.

According to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Gore's lack of perspective on the legitimate environmental challenges that confront the world has long been acknowledged by those in his own political party.

As early 1992, CEI said, a Democratic campaign advisor warned that Gore "has no sense of proportion: He equates the failure to recycle aluminum cans with the Holocaust - an equation that parodies the former and dishonors the latter."

"Because of his reputation as a boring technocrat, most of the public is still not aware of the loony extent of Gore's green ideology," said Myron Ebell, director of global warming policy at CEI.

"Not even Howard Dean -- the presidential candidate Gore has endorsed -- is supportive of the Kyoto global warming treaty which Gore negotiated in 1997 when he was vice president."

CEI is a non-profit, non-partisan public policy group dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government.